June 2010
No.7
INDIAN GDP, 1600-1871: SOME PRELIMINARY ESTIMATES AND A
COMPARISON WITH BRITAIN
Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta
University of Warwick
WORKING PAPER SERIES
Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy
Department of Economics
INDIAN GDP, 1600-1871: SOME PRELIMINARY ESTIMATES AND A
COMPARISON WITH BRITAIN
Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta
Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United
Kingdom
S.N.Broadberry@warwick.ac.uk
B.Gupta@warwick.ac.uk
28 April 2010
File: IndianGDPpre1870v4
Abstract: This paper provides estimates of Indian GDP constructed from the output
side for the period 1600-1871, and combines them with population estimates to track
changes in living standards. Indian per capita GDP declined steadily. As British living
standards increased from the mid-seventeenth century, India fell increasingly behind.
Whereas in 1650, Indian per capita GDP was more than 80 per cent of the British
level, by 1871 it had fallen to less than 15 per cent. As well as placing the origins of
the Great Divergence firmly in the early modern period, these estimates suggest a
relatively prosperous India at the height of the Mughal Empire, with living standards
well above bare bones subsistence.
JEL classification: N10, N30, N35, O10, O57
Key words: Indian GDP, comparison, Britain
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, there has been much progress in reconstructing the historical national
accounts of a number of European countries during the early modern and even the late
medieval periods (Blomme and van der Wee, 1994; Malanima, 2003; Krantz, 2004;
Álvarez-Nogal and Prados de la Escosura, 2007; Broadberry et al., 2009; van
Leeuwen and van Zanden, 2009). This paper applies similar methods to Asia,
providing estimates of Indian GDP for the period before 1870. There is a strong need
for estimates of Indian GDP during the early colonial period, to assess the strong
revisionist claims about Indian economic performance made recently in the context of
the Great Divergence debate. Parthasarathi (1998) has made the most striking claims
for south India during the eighteenth century, arguing that living standards were just
as high as in Britain, while Bayly (1983) has painted a picture of a thriving north
Indian economy during the eighteenth century.
This paper presents estimates of GDP constructed from the output side for the
pre-1871 period, and combines them with population data. We find that Indian per
capita GDP declined steadily between 1600 and 1871. As British living standards
increased from the mid-seventeenth century, India fell increasingly behind. Whereas
in 1650, Indian per capita GDP was more than 80 per cent of the British level, by
1871 it had fallen to less than 15 per cent. These estimates support the claims of
Broadberry and Gupta (2006), based on wage and price data, that the Great
Divergence had already begun during the early modern period. They are also
consistent with a relatively prosperous India at the height of the Mughal Empire,
although much of this prosperity had disappeared by the eighteenth century.
Projecting back from Maddison’s (2003) widely accepted estimates of GDP per capita
2
for the late nineteenth century in 1990 international dollars, we arrive at a per capita
income in 1600 of $782, well above the bare bones subsistence level of $400, or a
little over a dollar a day. This is more in line with the recent revisionist work on
Europe, which suggests that Maddison (2003) has substantially underestimated living
standards in the pre-modern world (Broadberry et al., 2009).
The paper proceeds as follows. We begin in Section II with a brief survey of
the existing literature on India’s long run economic performance. This is followed in
Section III by an overview of methods, drawing on previous work reconstructing
national income in Britain and Europe before 1800. Section IV then applies those
methods to India, describing the procedures for estimating output in agriculture,
industry and services, before aggregating the sectoral outputs into real GDP for India
during the period 1600-1871. In Section V, these GDP estimates are then combined
with data on population to derive estimates of Indian GDP per capita, and used to
compare living standards in India and Britain. Section V concludes.
III. INDIA’S LONG RUN ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE
India’s economic performance since the late sixteenth century has been the subject of
enduring controversy. The travelogues of Europeans to India in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries often described great wealth and opulence, but it is not difficult
to see this as reflecting their contact with the ruling classes, who enjoyed a luxurious
lifestyle with consumption of high quality food, clothing and ornaments, as well as
imported luxury products. The middle class merchants and rich peasants that
European travellers most frequently came into contact with also enjoyed a
comfortable life-style. However, most travel accounts of Mughal India and the
3
Deccan also noted that the majority of Indians lived in poverty (Chandra, 1982;
Fukazawa, 1982). The labouring classes were seen as living in mud huts with thatched
roofs, eating inferior grains, wearing rudimentary clothing and the use of footwear
was relatively unknown (Moreland, 1923: 197-203). While cultural and climatic
conditions may explain some of the consumption differences between India and
Europe, most writers were in little doubt that the average Indian lived in poverty.
Furthermore, there is a substantial literature which attempts to chart trends in
Indian living standards over time, starting from 1595. The reign of Akbar is usually
seen as the peak of economic well being, and is well documented in Abū ’l-Fazl’s
[1595] Ā’ īn–i-Akbarī, which meticulously reported wages and prices in the region of
Agra. This has provided a reference point for real wage comparisons with later years.
Desai (1972) made the striking claim that at best, the average standard of living in
1961 was no higher than in 1595, when although a labourer could afford less
industrial goods such as clothing, he could buy more food, with the changing relative
prices reflecting the changing productivity trends in agriculture and industry. The
paper provoked some controversy over the details of the calculations (Heston, 1977;
Moosvi, 1977; Desai, 1978). Nevertheless, most writers seem to accept the idea of a
downward real wage trend during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before
recovery during the twentieth century, a pattern first suggested by Mukerjee (1967)
and confirmed recently by Broadberry and Gupta (2006).
This view of Mughal India as a relatively backward economy has been
challenged recently by the work of revisionist economic historians, whose work must
be assessed within the wider context of changing views on the Great Divergence of
4
living standards between Asia and Europe. Parthasarathi’s (1998) characterisation of
south Indian real wages as on a par with English real wages in during the eighteenth
century is at variance with the older literature, but fits well with the claims of
Pomeranz (2000), Frank (1998) and other world historians that the most developed
parts of Asia were on the same development level as the most developed parts of
Europe such as Britain and the Netherlands as late as 1800. Bayly (1983) has painted
a picture of a thriving market economy in north India during the eighteenth century,
which leaves a similar impression.
Broadberry and Gupta (2006) compare silver and grain wages in Britain with
those in India and China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which casts
doubt on the revisionist position, suggesting that the Great Divergence was already
under way during the early modern period. However, a full assessment, encompassing
the ruling elites and middles classes as well as the labouring classes, requires the
reconstruction of national income in European and Asian countries. This paper makes
a start on that process by deriving estimates of GDP and population in India between
1600 and 1870, and comparing GDP per capita between India and Britain. This is the
first time series of national income estimates for India before the mid-nineteenth
century, which can be seen as joining up with Heston’s (1983) estimates for the
period after 1870. Our comparative results are also broadly consistent with Roy’s
(2010) finding that GDP per capita in Bengal was substantially lower than in England
and Wales during the second half of the eighteenth century.
III. AN OVERVIEW OF METHODS
5
The first phase of historical national accounting focused on reconstructing national
income for a small number of relatively rich countries in Western Europe and North
America, and starting around 1870, at the beginning of the modern statistical age
(Kuznets, 1946; Clark, 1957; Maddison, 1982). A natural development was the
application of this approach to other parts of the globe, and many non-western
countries now have historical national accounts reaching back to around 1870
(Maddison, 1995). For the period before 1870, there has now been a substantial period
of experimentation, beginning with the study of British economic growth back to
1688 by Deane and Cole (1967).
Deane and Cole’s (1967) study was remarkable for the way in which the
authors made efficient use of the limited range of processed data series that were
available at the time. Subsequent research by many authors has dramatically extended
the range of data now available, with the revised estimates of Crafts and Harley
(1992) proving an important staging post. Broadberry and van Leeuwen (2008) have
now succeeded in producing annual estimates of GDP for Great Britain over the
period 1700-1850. Furthermore, Broadberry et al. (2009) have extended the approach
back to 1300 for the territory of England.
Deane and Cole’s (1967) approach now seems remarkably simple in the light
of the vast amount of subsequent research. Nevertheless, its simplicity and modest
demands on data makes it particularly suitable as a starting point for Asian historical
national accounting in the period before the wide availability of official statistics at a
national level. We focus here on Deane and Cole’s (1967) method for the eighteenth
century, where they constructed an index of total real output, based on industry,
6
agriculture and services. Their estimates are reproduced here in Table 1. The sector
that was most firmly grounded in the data was industry. For the export industries,
such as cotton, output was assumed to grow in line with exports, for which abundant
data were available. For home industry, production was assumed to move in line with
the physical quantities of output of leather, beer, candles and soap. Finally, since
Deane and Cole had no independent data on commerce, the index of industrial output
was assumed to apply also to the commercial sector. It is not much of an
exaggeration, therefore, to say that the whole of the industrial and commercial sector
was dependent on the export data.
For agriculture and services, by contrast, the key data series was population.
For agriculture, an index of production was derived by assuming that agricultural
demand grew in line with population, which amounted to assuming constant per
capita corn consumption. An adjustment was then made for known imports and
exports of grain, to convert demand to domestic production. For services, even in
modern national accounts it is not uncommon to assume that real output moves in line
with employment. Since for the eighteenth century Deane and Cole had only
fragmentary evidence on employment, they assumed that service output grew in line
with population. For the government sector, however, it was possible to obtain direct
estimates of output from government budget sources. Finally, to combine the
individual series into an index of GDP, it was necessary to find appropriate weights
for agriculture, industry and services. These were taken from Gregory King’s [1696]
social tables, and are given at the top of each column in Table 1.
7
It should by now be clear that Deane and Cole’s (1967) estimates of British
GDP in the eighteenth century are overwhelmingly dependent on the path of
population and exports, with a minor role for government expenditure and a restricted
set of volume indicators for home industry. It would not be difficult to assemble a
similar data set for India between 1600 and 1871, and that is what we proceed to do in
the next section. However, we will not stop there, because work conducted since
Deane and Cole’s (1967) study suggests a number of ways of improving upon this
approach, and again in ways which can be replicated with the data available for India.
First, subsequent work on the agricultural sector has allowed for a more
sophisticated treatment of demand. Crafts (1976) criticised Deane and Cole’s
assumption of constant per capita corn consumption while real incomes were rising
and the relative price of corn was changing, and Crafts (1985) recalculated the path of
agricultural output in Britain with income and price elasticities derived from the
experience of later developing countries. The approach was developed further by
Allen (2000) using consumer theory. Allen (2000: 13-14) starts with the identity:
q a  r cN
(1)
where qa is agricultural output, r is the ratio of production to consumption, c is
consumption per head and N is population. Agricultural consumption per head is
assumed to be a function of its own price (pa), the general consumer price level (pc),
and income (y). Assuming a log-linear specification, we have:
ln c   0   1 ln p a   2 ln p c   ln y
(2)
where α1 and α2 are the own-price and cross-price elasticities of demand, β is the
income elasticity of demand and α0 is a constant. Consumer theory requires that the
own-price, cross-price and income elasticities should sum to zero, which sets tight
8
constraints on the plausible values, particularly given the accumulated evidence on
elasticities in developing countries (Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980: 15-16, 60-82). For
early modern Europe, Allen (2000: 14) works with an own-price elasticity of -0.6 and
a cross-price elasticity of 0.1, which constrains the income elasticity to be 0.5.
Second, a number of authors have used the share of the population living in
towns as a measure of the growth of the non-agricultural sector. This approach began
with Wrigley (1985), and has recently been combined with the demand approach to
agriculture to provide indirect estimates of GDP in a number of European countries
during the early modern period (Malanima, 2003; Álvarez-Nogal and Prados de la
Escosura, 2007; Pfister, 2008). With the path of agricultural output (qa) derived using
equations (1) and (2), overall output (q) is derived as:
q
qa
1  q na / q 
(3)
where the share of non-agricultural output in total output (qna/q) is proxied by the
urbanisation rate. The approach can be made less crude by adjusting the urbanisation
rate to deal with rural industry or agricultural workers living in towns.
IV. ESTIMATING INDIAN NATIONAL INCOME
In this section we derive estimates of Indian GDP by sector, following the basic
approach of Deane and Cole (1967), but incorporating demand effects into agriculture
and urbanisation effects into services.
1. Population
The first full census of India was conducted non-synchronously between 1867 and
1872, but is usually presented as the first decennial census for 1871. For the period
9
1801-1871, we use the decadal estimates of Mahalanobis and Bhattacharya (1976),
who assembled information collected by the British for the three Presidencies of
Bengal, Madras and Bombay, and supplemented this with assumptions about the rate
of population growth in the non-enumerated regions. For earlier years, we have drawn
on the estimates collected together by Visaria and Visaria (1983: 466), based on a 50year frequency. We use the Bhattacharya estimates for 1751-1801, the mean Datta
estimates to link 1600 and 1750, the Wilcox estimates to link 1600 with 1650, and
log-linear interpolation for 1700.
Given the hybrid nature of the series projected back from the 1871 benchmark,
it is worth noting that Habib (1982: 164-166) provides a useful cross-check for the
absolute population level in 1600, on the basis of three alternative methods of
estimation. One approach, based on the cultivated area, yields an estimate of 142
million, while an alternative approach based on land revenue suggests a population of
144.3 million. A third method, based on the size of armies, suggests a population of
140 to 150 million. All three estimates are broadly consistent with our population
figure of 142 million in 1600.
2. Agricultural output
The simplest procedure for estimating an index of agricultural output is to follow
Deane and Cole’s (1967) assumption of constant per capita grain consumption in
deriving domestic demand. This is also the approach used by Wrigley (1985) for preindustrial Europe. However, Deane and Cole also made an allowance for net exports
of grain, and in the case of India, we shall need to allow for net exports of agricultural
crops, particularly during the nineteenth century as exports of cotton cloth declined.
10
Focusing initially on domestic demand, our first index of domestic agricultural
production is simply the index of the population level. Following Crafts (1985) and
Allen (2000), however, it is desirable to allow for consumer response to changing real
incomes. Table 3 thus sets out an index of real wages for unskilled labourers in India,
derived from Broadberry and Gupta (2006) for the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, supplemented by additional information for the nineteenth century from
Mukerjee (1967). Although the precise magnitude of the fall in the real wage from its
high level in the early seventeenth century is a matter of controversy, most scholars
have acknowledged the downward trend (Desai, 1972; 1978; Moosvi, 1973; 1977;
Heston, 1977). Furthermore, it is interesting to note that the scale of the Indian real
wage decline is similar to that suggested by Allen (2001) for early modern southern
and eastern Europe, where a long period of decline steadily eroded the post-Black
Death doubling of real wages.
Indices of domestic agricultural production are provided in Table 4A. The first
index is based on the assumption of constant per capita grain consumption, while the
second series is derived from the demand model with an income elasticity of demand
of 0.5. Whereas the constant per capita grain consumption model suggests a
substantial growth of agricultural output with the expansion of the population, the
demand model suggests an agricultural sector that was struggling to maintain output
at its Mughal peak until well into the nineteenth century.
Turning to the impact of foreign trade, Table 4b provides an index of
agricultural exports. This is derived by obtaining the value of total exports in current
11
prices and the share of agricultural crops from Chaudhuri (1983), and deflating the
resulting series of agricultural exports in current prices by an agricultural price index
from Mukerjee (1967). For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we have
assumed that agricultural exports grew in line with domestic agricultural production.
Weights for the export and domestic components of agricultural production in 1871
are obtained by projecting the share of exports in total production in 1901 back in
time. Although the share of exports in total agricultural production in 1871 was only
around 10 per cent, agricultural exports nevertheless had a significant impact on the
path of total agricultural production in the nineteenth century, as exports of crops such
as raw cotton, opium and indigo offset the decline in exports of cotton piece goods.
3. Industrial Output
Table 5 sets out the data for estimating the output of industry oriented towards the
home market. Before the nineteenth century, this moved in line with population, as
the result of an assumed constancy of per capita consumption of cloth at 8.41 square
yards per head, derived from Prakash (1976: 174) for the early eighteenth century,
and consistent with the level suggested for the late nineteenth century by Ellison
[1886: 63]. Nevertheless, domestic production did not move simply in line with
population after 1801 because of the growing penetration of the Indian home market
by imports from Britain.
For export industry, it is possible to track Indian textile exports to Britain for
the period 1665-1834 from Chaudhuri (1978) and Bowen (2007). The data are set out
in Table 6 and Figure 1. Although we lack data for Indian exports to other countries, it
is possible to make an allowance for the growing share of Britain as an export
12
destination using data on regional shares of bullion inflows to India from Haider
(1996: 323), since the purchase of Indian textiles was financed largely with silver.
The data in Figure 1 capture the healthy state of the Indian cotton textile export
industry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After 1801, however, the
industry went into decline, particularly with the growing British competition after the
end of the Napoleonic Wars (Broadberry and Gupta, 2009a). Table 7 charts the
continued decline of the Indian textile export industry until the establishment of a
modern factory based industry in Bombay during the 1850s (Morris, 1983: 572-583;
Farnie, 2004: 400-405). The current price data for the period 1851-1871 have been
converted to constant prices using an index of imported cotton cloth prices from
Sandberg (1974: 260), which tracks well the price of domestically produced cloth for
overlapping years from Mitra (1978: 207). During this period, the price of cloth rose
by just 6.3 per cent, so the deflation makes only a small difference to the nominal
data.
Putting together the trends in home industries and export industries, it is clear
that there was an absolute decline in industrial production in nineteenth century India,
rather than just a reduction of the share of industry in economic activity, consistent
with Clingingsmith and Williamson’s (2008) definition of strong rather than weak
deindustrialisation. Nevertheless, the scale of Indian deindustrialisation shown here is
in line with that suggested by Twomey (1983) rather than the more catastrophic
domestic industrial collapse claimed by Bagchi (1976) on the basis of evidence from
the state of Bihar.
4. The service sector
13
For domestic services and housing, Deane and Cole (1967) assumed growth in line
with population. However, recent work on the long run development of the European
economy suggests that service sector growth moves more closely in line with the
urban population (Broadberry et al., 2009). Estimates of the urban share of the
population in India are presented in Table 8 for benchmark years, suggesting a decline
in the share of the population living in cities of more than 5,000 inhabitants.
Multiplying the population by the urban share, with interpolation between benchmark
years, yields an estimate of the urban population, which remained fairly stable despite
the growing total population.
5. Sectoral shares
To aggregate the time series for output in each of the major sectors into a total real
output index, we require value added weights. The earliest sectoral value added
weights for India are for 1900/01 from the work of Sivasubramonian (2000).
However, these can be projected back to circa 1871 using changes in employment
structure, following the procedure used by Hoffmann (1965: 389) for Germany.
Essentially, this involves assuming that the sectoral distribution of value added per
employee in 1900/01 acts as a good indicator of the sectoral distribution of value
added per employee in 1871.
The sectoral weights for India circa 1871 are set out in Table 9. The largest
sector was agriculture, and industry was largely geared towards the domestic market.
Commerce accounted for 5.5 per cent of GDP, but is combined here with industry.
Government, domestic services and housing together accounted for the remaining
10.3 per cent of GDP.
14
6. Total real output
Table 10 sets out the time series for all the major sectors and the aggregate output or
gross domestic product (GDP) index obtained using the 1871 sectoral weights from
Table 9. Industry and commerce grew rapidly during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, in contrast to the stagnation in agriculture. Since agriculture was the largest
sector, the growth of total output was therefore quite modest before 1801. During the
nineteenth century, although agriculture began to grow, this was offset by
developments in industry and commerce, where there was a severe loss of export
markets and penetration of the Indian home market by cotton textile imports from
Britain, so that total output stagnated.
V. PER CAPITA GDP
The GDP series from Table 10 can be combined with the population data from Table
2 to establish in Table 11 the path of GDP per capita in India. Per capita GDP
declined fairly steadily between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Table 12
puts India’s per capita GDP performance in an international comparative perspective.
Benchmarking on the comparative India/GB per capita GDP level for 1871 from
Broadberry and Gupta (2009b), we see that India’s comparative position deteriorated
sharply from a position of more than 80 per cent of the British level in 1650 to just
14.5 per cent by 1871. The relative decline occurred fairly steadily from the midseventeenth century.
Table 13 converts the GDP per capita information in index number form from
Table 12 into absolute levels of 1990 international dollars, as has become standard
15
since the work of Maddison (1995). This enables us to gauge how far above bare
bones subsistence India was. The World Bank’s “dollar-a-day” definition of poverty
suggests a per capita income level of around $400 as a minimum, and Maddison
(1995) finds a number of third world countries at this level in the modern world. Note,
however, that Mughal India was well above this level, and even after the decline of
the seventeenth century, per capita incomes remained between 650 and 750 dollars for
most of the eighteenth century. It was only during the nineteenth century that Indian
per capita incomes fell close to bare bones subsistence.
Tables 12 and 13 have important implications for the debate over the Great
Divergence. First, Parthasarathi (1998) uses a comparative real wage study of Britain
and India to support the “California School” view that living standards in the most
developed parts of Asia were on a par with the most developed parts of Europe as late
as the end of the eighteenth century (Frank, 1998; Pomeranz, 2000). The evidence
presented in Table 12, however, suggests that Indian living standards were already
substantially below the British level during the seventeenth century. This supports the
view of Broadberry and Gupta (2006) that the Great Divergence was already well
underway during the early modern period.
Second, although Table 13 provides evidence of a prosperous India at the
height of the Mughal Empire at the time of Akbar, much of this prosperity had
disappeared by the eighteenth century. However, it is only with further decline during
the nineteenth century that most Indians were reduced to what Allen (2009) calls
“bare bones” subsistence. With per capita incomes of between 650 and 750
international dollars in 1990 prices, eighteenth century India was still sufficiently
16
prosperous to be consistent with the scale of market activity described by Bayly
(1983).
VI. CONCLUDING COMMENTS
This paper provides estimates of Indian GDP constructed from the output side for the
pre-1871 period, and combines them with population estimates to track the path of
living standards. Indian per capita GDP declined steadily between 1600 and 1871. As
British living standards increased from the mid-seventeenth century, India fell
increasingly behind. Whereas in 1650, Indian per capita GDP was more than 80 per
cent of the British level, by 1871 it had fallen to less than 15 per cent.
These estimates cast further doubt on the extent of the recent revisionist work
which seeks to date the origins of the Great Divergence of living standards between
Europe and Asia only after the Industrial Revolution (Frank, 1998; Parthasarathi,
1998; Pomeranz, 2000). The GDP per capita data, as well as the wage and price data
surveyed by Broadberry and Gupta (2006), suggest strongly that the Great Divergence
had already begun during the early modern period. They are also consistent with a
relatively prosperous India at the height of the Mughal Empire, although much of this
prosperity had disappeared by the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, India sank close
to the bare bones subsistence level of living standards only during the nineteenth
century.
17
TABLE 1: Index numbers of British eighteenth century real output (1700=100)
AgriculExport
Home
ture industries industries
(weights)
1700
1710
1720
1730
1740
1750
1760
1770
1780
1790
1800
(43)
100
104
105
103
104
111
115
117
126
135
143
(18)
100
108
125
142
148
176
222
256
246
383
544
(12)
100
98
108
105
105
107
114
114
123
137
152
Total
Rent
Govt Total
industry
and
and
real
and services defence output
commerce
(30)
(20)
(7) (100)
100
100
100
100
104
103
165
108
118
103
91
108
127
102
98
110
131
102
148
115
148
105
172
125
179
113
310
147
199
121
146
144
197
129
400
167
285
142
253
190
387
157
607
251
Source: Deane and Cole (1967: 78).
TABLE 2: Indian population, 1751-1871
Year
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
Millions
142
142
164
190
207
215
205
216
212
232
244
256
Sources: Mahalanobis and Bhattacharya (1976: 7); Visaria and Visaria (1983: 466).
18
TABLE 3: Real wages of Indian unskilled labourers, 1600-1871
Year
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
1871=100
207.9
179.8
171.9
140.7
120.8
106.7
94.4
101.5
109.1
117.5
108.3
100.0
Source: Broadberry and Gupta (2006: 14); Mukerjee (1967: 58).
19
TABLE 4: Indian agricultural output, 1751-1871 (1871=100)
A. Agricultural production for domestic market
Year
Constant per
Demand
capita grain
model
consumption
1600
55.5
85.4
1650
55.5
77.6
1700
64.1
87.1
1751
74.2
89.3
1801
80.9
89.3
1811
84.0
86.8
1821
80.1
77.8
1831
84.4
85.0
1841
82.8
86.6
1851
90.6
98.5
1861
95.3
99.3
1871
100.0
100.0
B. Agricultural exports and total production
Year
Agricultual
Agricultural
Total
exports
production for agricultural
domestic market
production
1600
12.2
85.4
78.1
1650
11.1
77.6
71.0
1700
12.5
87.1
79.6
1751
12.8
89.3
81.7
1801
12.8
89.3
81.6
1811
14.1
86.8
79.5
1821
20.5
77.8
72.1
1831
23.8
85.0
78.9
1841
32.9
86.6
81.2
1851
54.5
98.5
94.1
1861
61.2
99.3
95.5
1871
100.0
100.0
100.0
Sources and notes: Domestic agricultural production: derived from Tables 2 and 3.
Agricultural exports in current prices: Chaudhuri (1983: 828-837, 842-844),
converted to constant prices using an agricultural price index from Mukerjee (1967:
51). Before 1801, agricultural exports assumed to grow in line with domestic
production. Share of agricultural exports in agricultural production in 1901 from
Sivasubramonian (2000) projected back to 1871.
20
TABLE 5: Cotton textile production for the domestic Indian market
Year
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
Population
Cotton
Imports
(millions) consumption from Britain
(m yds)
(m yds)
142
1,194
0
142
1,194
0
164
1,379
0
190
1,598
0
207
1,741
0
215
1,808
1
205
1,724
20
216
1,817
38
212
1,783
141
232
1,951
348
244
2,052
514
256
2,153
793
Domestic
production
(m yds)
1,194
1,194
1,379
1,598
1,741
1,807
1,704
1,779
1,642
1,603
1,538
1,360
Sources: Population: Table 2. Cotton consumption per head: Prakash (1976: 174).
Imports from Britain: Sandberg (1974: 142).
TABLE 6: Indian textile exports to Britain, 1665-1831
Year
1665
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
Pieces
291,666
868,095
701,485
1,037,440
691,640
758,397
287,814
Years
Pieces
1665-69
139,677
1700-04
597,978
1750-54
632,174
1800-04 1,355,304
1810-14
901,745
1820-24
542,117
1830-34
192,965
Sources: 1665-1761: Chaudhuri (1978: Tables C.20-C.22); 1761-1834: Bowen
(2007).
21
FIGURE 1: East India Company imports of textiles from India (pieces)
Souces: Chaudhuri (1978: Tables C20-C.22); Bowen (2007).
TABLE 7: Total Indian textile exports, 1831-1871
Year
Thousand
pieces
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
3,000
2,606
2,279
Value of
cotton goods
(Rs 0000, in
1851 prices)
7,355
8,365
14,865
Source: Piece goods exports from Twomey (1983: 42); value of cotton goods exports
from Chaudhuri (1983: 833-834, 844), converted to 1851 prices using unit values of
imported cotton cloth sold in the Indian market from Sandberg (1974: 260).
22
TABLE 8: Urban population in India
Year
Population
(millions)
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
142
142
164
190
207
215
205
216
212
232
244
256
Urban
share
(%)
15
15
14
13
13
13
12
12
11
11
10
8.7
Urban
population
(millions)
21.3
21.3
23.0
24.7
26.9
28.0
24.6
25.9
23.3
25.5
24.4
22.3
Sources: Population: Table 2. Urban share: 1600, 1801: Habib (1982: 166-171); 1871:
Visaria and Visaria (1983: 519); Other years: interpolation.
TABLE 9: Indian sectoral weights, 1871
Agriculture
Domestic industry
Export industry
Total industry and commerce
Services and housing
Total economy
%
67.5
21.5
0.7
22.2
10.3
100.0
Sources: Employment structure in 1875 from Heston (1983: 396); adjusted for value
added per employee in current prices using 1900/01 data from Sivasubramonian
(2000: 38, 405-408).
23
TABLE 10: Indian real output (1871=100)
Year
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
AgriculHome
Export
ture industries industries
78.1
71.0
79.6
81.7
81.6
79.5
72.1
78.9
81.2
94.1
95.5
100.0
87.8
87.8
101.4
117.5
128.0
132.9
125.3
130.8
120.7
117.9
113.1
100.0
148.6
148.6
202.0
213.6
457.9
304.7
183.2
65.2
56.6
49.5
56.3
100.0
Total
Rent
industry
and
and services
commerce
93.9
95.5
93.9
95.5
111.5
103.0
127.1
110.8
161.0
120.7
150.1
125.3
131.1
110.3
124.2
116.2
114.3
104.6
111.0
114.4
107.4
109.4
100.0
100.0
Total
real
output
82.5
77.7
87.6
93.3
98.2
97.3
88.2
93.8
92.0
101.0
100.4
100.0
Sources: Agriculture: Table 4B, total agricultural production; Home industries: Table
5; Export industries: Tables 6 and 7, adjusted for the growing share of British exports
during the seventeenth century using data on bullion inflows by region from Haider
(1996: 323); Rent and services: Tables 2 and 8; Sectoral shares: Table 9.
TABLE 11: Indian per capita GDP (1871=100)
Year
GDP
Population
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
82.5
77.7
87.6
93.3
98.2
97.3
88.2
93.8
92.0
101.0
100.4
100.0
55.5
55.5
64.1
74.2
80.9
84.0
80.1
84.4
82.8
90.6
95.3
100.0
Per capita
GDP
148.7
140.0
136.7
125.7
121.5
115.8
110.2
111.1
111.0
111.5
105.4
100.0
Sources: GDP from Table 10; population from Table 2.
24
TABLE 12: Comparative India/GB GDP per capita
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
Indian GDP
per capita
GB GDP
per capita
148.7
140.0
136.7
125.7
121.5
115.8
110.2
111.1
111.0
111.5
105.4
100.0
1871=100
30.4
24.9
40.7
46.2
59.0
57.7
57.6
60.0
65.6
75.0
84.5
100.0
India/GB
GDP per
capita
488.9
562.0
335.8
271.9
205.9
200.8
191.4
185.4
169.3
148.6
124.8
100.0
India/GB
GDP per
capita
GB=100
70.9
81.5
48.7
39.4
29.9
29.1
27.7
26.9
24.6
21.6
18.1
14.5
Sources and notes: Indian GDP per capita from Table 11; GB GDP: 1600-1700 from
Broadberry et al. (2010); 1700-1870 from Broadberry and van Leeuwen (2008); 18701871 from Deane (1968: 106); GB population: Mitchell (1988: 9-12). Comparative
India/GB GDP per capita level in 1871 derived from Broadberry and Gupta (2010),
adjusting from a UK to a GB basis using Irish shares of GDP and population from
Crafts (2005: 56) and Feinstein (1972: Table 55).
TABLE 13: Indian and British GDP per capita, 1600-1871 (1990 international
dollars)
Year
1600
1650
1700
1751
1801
1811
1821
1831
1841
1851
1861
1871
Indian GDP
per capita
782
736
719
661
639
609
580
585
584
586
554
526
GB GDP
per capita
1,104
904
1,477
1,678
2,142
2,093
2,090
2,176
2,380
2,721
3,065
3,629
Source: Derived from Table 12 and Maddison (2003).
25
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